Demented
by urzafailure
Summary: Romance-Dramedy bout Draco and Hermione. Highlights include: ice cream, Azkaban, a traitor, spasms, a crystal ball and ducks. Please R&R! Rated T for some language, nothing you don't hear on TV


**Demented**

The cry of a thousand cackles radiating from the city of a hundred sorrows gave him the giggles. It helped that he was one of those sorrowful ones, he who once possessed an analytical brain, now fragmented by stray shrapnel during one of the Order's sorties against He-Who-Must-Now-Be-Named. There were times when he remembered that his name was Draco Malfoy, but there were also times, more often than the other, where he thought he was an ice cream vendor in the Hogwarts cafeteria.

In fact, that seemed more plausible to him, for he truly loved rocky road ice cream.

Two dementors had slipped in through the walls of his cell while he completed his morning ritual; spitting seven times into the wooden bucket by his bed's end. Draco/Ice cream man knew that to resist would be bad, painful too, so he flapped his arms once like a duck and let their cold finger-equivalents encircle his arms. The funny thing about this was that their touch was numbing, and his arms were still in duck wing position.

_quackquackquack _

Out of the cell, and into a poorly kept, overgrown garden, its perimeter bound by walls that seemed to meet the brown-stained sun.

The dementors that brought him there disappeared, and he found himself alone, the numbness receding. He gave his arms a preliminary shake; it was a bit difficult at first, but after a couple of more shakes, they were as good as new.

Well not really "as new;" as good as they were when he first turned bonkers would be a better modifier.

He had just completed a walk around the enclosed grounds when the dementors appeared again, and they brought company. Her head was shaved but she still had that mousy know-it-all expression she had perfected within Hogwarts. (She liked vanilla ice cream, he remembered. How plain.)

Without any wasted movements, the dementors vanished yet again, leaving the two of them together. It was at this point that he began to cackle uncontrollably.

"Mudblood likes vanilla! Mudblood likes vanilla!"

There came an animal-like roar from the girl and suddenly, Draco/Ice cream man found himself on the ground, with the mousy girl on top of him. They were a perfect example of what some people might call "a compromising position," especially considering how thin their Azkaban-regulation robes were. This brought on another round of cackling from him, and that in turn earned him a good hard slap across the face.

Freeze-frame, he thought. That really stung.

On her part, it was as if he had struck her as well, for she stared back at him, blinking almost rapidly, like an animal caught in the headlights of a train. After several slower blinks, she rolled off him, onto her back, and something made him follow, such that their position was now reversed. Draco/Ice cream ma...now, Draco, just Draco, noticed that he was breathing heavily now, as was she. It was still a very compromising position, perhaps more so now, but then, this wasn't her dorm room, and it wasn't his dorm room either.

"Hermione."

"Draco."

Something nearby croaked, but they ignored it. They ignored everything else, until he spoke again, "I'm sorry I called you that."

"It's okay. I don't think you meant it, or mean it anymore."

"I don't, I love you remember?"

"Yes. I remember. Because I love you too."

She pushed him off and rolled away again, getting up to her feet. "Alright. Let's stop demeaning ourselves then. They are watching you know."

"_They_ aren't real human beings."

"Well someone has to be watching us, because I don't think the Dementors are getting off on us."

"Of course not, it's not like I'm humping the ground or anything."

She flashed him another angry look. "Must you be so crude?"

He countered with a wide grin. "Well, I'm mentally insane, metal chunks in my head and all. What's your excuse?"

"You messed me up remember?"

"...Yeah, bloody blame it on me then."

"I just did..."

"I didn't make you shave your head and come out like a dyke!"

She was a sight indeed. Besides her shaved head, the nails on her fingers and toes were long, and shaved to a point. Her robe was more brown then white, tattered in places that could have almost been suggestive in some bizarre, perverse manner. Draco had long stopped looking at her when she smiled; her sharpened teeth frightened him, although he would never admit that to anyone. Not even to his ice cream.

Of course he wasn't much for the eyes either. Long platinum blonde hair that looked like a caveman's afro contrasted sharply with his once-pale skin, now without a millimeter unsmeared by soot or coal. Sometimes the stitches in his head twitched, and made him spasm, but he got used to it. Well, he had to, really.

He was also used to what was going to happen next. No real surprise, truth be told.

"You know what," Hermione said in that tone…that tone again! "Harry's will be here to free us any moment now. Just you wait."

She always knew what to say to make him lose his calm.

"Yes let's bring him up again shall we? After all, you don't go gushing over him enough when I'm around!"

"I'm only trying to provide some semblance of hope in quite a bleak situation here!"

"Kiss my arse Granger! You're still fixated on "the messiah." Always were, always will be!"

"How dare you accuse me of that Malfoy when we both know that you've gone and shagged practically everyone in our batch, quite a few of the lower ones and some of the professors!"

"…Besides the git is probably dead and rotting in some anonymous ditch somewhere. Either that or he has enough common sense to hightail it to some parallel dimension where it's peaceful and he doesn't have your whining voice playing over and over in his ear…"

"Your jealousy is leaking out of your ears Malfoy or is that your brain again?"

"…And if you hadn't been so obsessed over him perhaps good old Weasley would still be on the side of the angels, wouldn't he?"

He knew he had hit a nerve, right about the time she opened up one of his with those claws of hers. In the ensuing scuffle, his head hit the ground, quite close to where his skull had been patched up. It set his cranium on fire; as if a million wasps were pouring out of his skull's orifices in a real hurry. Ice cream man felt his limbs begin to quiver; until he lost all control of them...oh he was really in for it now. Strangely enough, he felt a sense of detachment as he noted that he had wet and shat himself, and a whole mess of tears were no making their way down his face.

_quackquackquack _

Oh wait, that was not raw meat in his mouth, not the raw meat they force-fed Hermione as some sick form of torture. No, that was his tongue he was rendering to a pulp.

Eventually, after what felt like an hour to him, he became aware that he was in her arms, and that it was warm there, except for the occasional trickle of tears from one of them. And yet, it was a fleeting comfort, for the dementors chose that moment to reappear, and to separate them.

Suddenly, she began to howl and rave and gnash her teeth again, while shouting "I hate you Malfoy! I hate you!" as they took her back to her cell.

On his part, he could for a few seconds, remember that first time he had walked her back to Hogwarts in the midst of a pouring storm and the warm fire that greeted them in that empty hall, and the resultant mix of turbulent emotions being spilt out…but the recollection did not last long. And soon, the numbness began to sink in again and he could not flap his arms one last time.

_quack_-IloveyouHermione-_quack_-Ireallydo-_quack_

And somewhere, far, far away, He-Who-Must-Now-Be-Named grinned at the amusing spectacle projected into his crystal ball. It gave him quite the chuckle each morning, and the idea of forcing the two to co-exist together for one hour everyday was sheer genius and sheer comedy as well. He-Who-Must-Be-Named made a small mental note to reward the Weasley traitor for the idea. Perhaps, to turn down the voltage on his electroshock "re-education process" just a teeny-tiny bit. It was the least he could do for such a loyal lackey, and it wouldn't hurt to treat the underlings every now and then.

He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named knew the importance of good morale after all. He wasn't _crazy_ or anything like that.


End file.
